What can be included in "Print Culture"?

In one of my non-archives classes the other day, I was talking with a fellow student and I had been telling him about some of what was going on in the archives classes. He had mentioned a quote that he heard from one of the professors that he said he has on a Post-It by his computer.

Digital documents don't survive by accident.

This was implying that paper documents can. And if you leave paper documents sitting around for a hundred years, someone will still be able to find them and figure out what they were meant for. Digital documents don't work like that, you will be lucky to retrieve a file that was created in a program 15 years ago.

The question of "Are digital documents still part of print culture?" seems to be what I am getting at here. But that wasn't really my intent, it was just a great quote, and it can be an issue to be discussed later. The idea of items laying around for decades and still having the capacity to be recovered is fascinating and exciting. And it applies more to than just the "written word."

My interest is in photographs. I enjoy the visual nature of items and I would like to say that photographs can be just as valuable as text. Pictures can be understood in any language. They can give detail in a single glance that would take pages upon pages of text to convey.

I would like to share a video story of a photographer by the name of Leo Beachy. This story has a few parts to it: the story of the photographer and the story of the journey of his negatives. I was profoundly touched by this story, the amazing zeal for life and the extreme importance of photography in this man's life and the crazy happenstance that some of his work still survives today. This video left me very misty-eyed. I hope that you will enjoy the story, as well.

Leo Beachy's Story

Meeting Minutes, April 1, 2008

Print Culture Society
April 1, 2008 meeting.
Attended by 8 members. (Welcome, Simone!)

Blog

There is now a print culture blog at: http://uwmadisonpcs.blogspot.com/. There are links on it to the Print Culture Society website, as well as to the Center for Print Culture in Modern America website.

Meeting minutes will be posted there, as well as discussion. Anyone interested in writing articles in it with print culture themes, please email uwprintculture@gmail.com

Religious Text Exhibits

Anna and Dave M met with Jill Rosenshield to discuss display opportunities. Anna has prepared a Proposal Outline, which will be summarized.

The dates of the exhibit are still To Be Determined and space needs to be reserved with Robin Rider in Special Collections.

The categories listed are ideas for displays. We have approximately 12+ displays to fill. Each category/research topic would ideally fill one case. Anna, Jill and Dave came up with topics, which we discussed at the meeting and a few people expressed interest in doing the research for that topic, these are tentative, working ideas:

1. Print Culture and Literacy in Religion
2. Textual Criticisms of Religious Works (Simone)
3. Alternative Uses of Religious Texts
4. Pamphlets and Politics in Print Culture
5. Wisconsin Religion
6. Religious Themes in Icelandic Sagas
7. Women in Religions
8. Print Culture and Education in Eastern Religions (Gabe)
9. Religious Publication Practices (Anna)
10. Book Burials (Anna)
11. (suggested at meeting) Cult, 1960s-1970s literature

Each person would be responsible for researching the subject area, writing short pieces for the display case and selecting examples from the holdings in Special Collections. Information that would need to be included: Bibliographic information (publication and distribution), relevance to religion, relevance to print culture and any other interesting facts.

For these 12 cases, we would need about 3-4 people to help, students may be able to do this as an Independent Study .
Research issues/suggestions: There is a huge Western bias in the Special collection holdings, ideas on doing inter-library loan for the exhibit came up, as well as an opportunity for a research project (ie “Challenging the Dominant Paradigm”). The Chicago Art Institute has a good Eastern collection and that would be a good place to go for researching. Jim Danky has a collection at WHS which includes information on feminism and Paganism, which would be good to look at. The Odd Wisconsin blog also has some information on early printed material (Native American prayer book).

It has also been requested that we fill the Memorial Library cases in the entrance lobby. Less rare materials (Cult literature) would preferably go there.

An exhibition booklet/catalog should be prepared with summaries of the cases and the overall scope of the exhibit.

Funding from UW Friends should be looked into, as well as matching funds from the University.

Religious Studies Speakers

Dave is still trying to contact professors, and is also trying to get a grasp on a succinct, articulate scope for the lecture series. It was also suggested that after our displays are created, we could give presentations on our research.

Secret History of the Mongols

Book that Gabe is currently reading, it was brought up that he could give a presentation on this, as well.

STEM conference

Science, Technology Engineering and Medicine, interdisciplinary conference. Christine Pawley will be asking Print Culture Society for volunteers, please consider.

Chicago Caxton trip

Please check the Facebook group “Print Culture Club”

If you are going for sure, PLEASE email Gabe ASAP. He will be coordinating transportation. The workshop is from 9am-4pm. Do you have a car to carpool? Will you be spending the night?

Gabe (gossett@wisc.edu)

Website

Lisa has all content and all control of the website. Here it is: http://slisweb.lis.wisc.edu/~print/

Bake Sale

We will be having a Bake Sale, Tuesday April 29, 2008 in the SLIS commons. Hopefully members can contribute about 2 batches of goodies to help start our organization’s finances. Please come and enjoy the goods!

Our next meeting (and last of the 2007-2008 year) will be Tuesday, May 6, 2008 in the SLIS commons at 11:45 am.

Introduction and Welcome!

This account has been created to record information and events sponsored by the UW-Madison student Print Culture Society. We hope that current members will add input and it can spur discussion. Meeting minutes will be posted here.

My name is Rachel and I am the Communications Coordinator for UW-Madison PCS for the Spring 2008 and the 2008-09 school year. I will be moderating and updating this blog.

Some ideas on how I'm hoping to use this blog:
I'm going to try to implement it much like a wiki, but with a bit more structure.

1. I will attempt to give each event and event-in-planning titles so that we can have all discussions on an event linked together. When a new set of meeting minutes has been posted, all comments should be made about the topic under the most recent entry about it.

2. If commenting, please leave your name. If you are not comfortable using any of the Open ID boxes, it can be written in the entry. Anonymous posts will most likely be deleted.